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After an Arctic blast left much of the United States out in the
cold, a new system is bringing the threat of severe weather to
the central portions of the country this evening and through the
night. A satellite snapped an image of the system earlier this
morning (Jan. 29).

The National Weather Service's (NWS) Storm Prediction Center,
located in Norman, Okla., has forecast severe thunderstorms, with
damaging winds and hail — and possibly even tornadoes — for the
lower Ohio Valley, the mid-South and the lower Mississippi
Valley. The SPC says the threat will increase through the night,
with squall lines (or long lines of thunderstorms) and individual
storms rolling through along with a cold front.

Nighttime storms and
tornadoes can be particularly deadly, as people tend to be in
bed and unaware of warnings and the storms are harder to see as
they bear down. A 2008 study in the American Meteorological
Society's journal Weather and Forecasting found that nighttime
tornadoes were 2.5 times as likely to cause a death as those that
occurred in the daytime. The threat of
deadly nighttime tornadoes is exacerbated in the winter with
the season's shorter daylight hours. [ 5
Deadliest Tornado Years in U.S. History ]

Tennessee leads the nation in the proportion of nighttime
tornadoes it sees, with nearly half of the twisters in its
borders striking after dark. Western Tennessee is one of the
places that could see severe weather in this latest bout, along
with most of Arkansas, and parts of Louisiana, Kentucky,
Missouri, Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana and Oklahoma.

The National Weather Service has issued several tornado watches
and severe storm warnings and alerted residents to the
possibility of large hail and high winds, as well as lightning
strikes. The Weather Channel reported on its Twitter account that
as of 2 p.m. ET, 24 severe weather reports, 10 severe wind
reports, 14 hail reports and no tornado reports had been made. It
also reported unconfirmed reports of a funnel cloud to the west
of Jefferson City, Mo.

The GOES East satellite (run by NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the parent organization of the NWS),
snapped an image of the cold front and accompanying stormy
conditions at 10:15 a.m. ET.

The cold front will sweep eastward on Wednesday and could bring
severe weather to parts of the East Coast, from the Gulf Coast
northward. By Wednesday evening, it could impact Washington,
D.C., and New York City.